


Sorority Witches in the Crimeball Bowl-O-Rama

by KriegsaffeNo9



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: F/F, Gen, Genderswap, Heist, Rating May Change, Sexual Tension, There's jizz stuff going on if you're concerned about that, Unrequited Crush, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-04-23 22:47:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14342583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: Sucy and Wangari hatch a plan to commit the most daring pinball crime in history.  Tensions brew as unrequited and exceptionally weird relationships come to a frothy, hoppy head.  This can only be a fiasco.





	1. Rare Pins, Rare Sins

Diana's bowling ball slammed from bumper to bumper and finally caved in the pins from the side, leaving two terrified scragglers behind. It was the last frame of the last round of the last game, she felt like unwinding. She turned to the Luna Nova Long Nights and bowed. Akko clapped. "Woo!" she said. "Good throw! That's your best game yet!"

"Getting better all the time," Diana said, smiling. "I'm really taking to this."

"I'm so glad~" Akko said, giving her a hug. "Come on, let's celebrate! How's about we get a Beautiful Bomb Bowl to celebrate?"

"Wait," Lotte said. "That's the one bigger than a golden retriever puppy!"

"Should we get two?"

"Oh no, I can... I can hold myself back..." Lotte said. "But make sure we know who wants in on it first before I start planning on how much I'll have."

"I'll text Sucy and Wangari!" Akko said, flipping her phone into the air and almost catching it. Diana snatched it before it hit the floor. "Thank you."

"Anytime," Diana said.

* * *

Sucy watched the easy sway of Wangari's hips as the school reporter played a rousing game of _Elvira and the Party Monsters_. Well, less her hips and more her butt in those bell-bottom (ahem, boot-cut) jeans. "Come on," Wangari said, juggling the pinball on the left flipper before making a calculated shot at the Monsterslide. "Gettin' there..." she said.

Sucy hated bowling, but she liked video games, alcohol, and roleplaying. She'd taken to LARPing like it was the 90s and the Astro Lounge was brand-new and retro-kitsch hip. It was intoxicating, and now she'd roped Wangari into the act.

Wangari LARPed by wearing a colorful blue bandana over the non-afro-poof of her hair, a white halter top, jean bell-bottoms, and (when she couldn't argue for barefootedness) Converse All Stars. Sucy roleplayed by wearing her school uniform and pretending she was Kurt Cobain.

"You got this, babe," Sucy said. Her phone hummed, a message from Akko.

"hey ice cream comin! want some?"

"Hey, Wan-Wan," Sucy said. "Wanna get in on some ice cream?"

"Nah, one of mine is makin' some biskuti back at Luna Nova. ... Well, maybe a little..." The ball drained. "Crap, I'm out."

"we'll pass" Sucy texted back. "Biskuti sounds nice. I think I've got a few tokens left, I'll give pinball a try."

"How about... that one?" Wangari said, waving at a neglected cabinet with a blue glow to it. Sucy slithered up to it. It was faintly dusty, but the playfield was bright, the display was intact, and the bash toys of assorted alien critters looked pristine. Maybe it was the hideous CGI translite art with the synapsid furries and wannabe-James-Cameron's-Avatar background.

" _Delgo_ , huh," Sucy said, counting her tokens.

"Hey, this is still only two tokens!" Wangari said. She was snapping pictures with her phone. "Even Polybius is three."

Sucy dropped her tokens and played. "Seems pretty alright..." she said. The gameplay was uninspired and her ball routinely got trapped in a trio of bumpers in the upper corner, and there seemed to be more modes than there were targets, of which there were around a billion. Her second ball was mainly spent leaning against the table and watching the ball haplessly bop around a nest of bumpers and targets and launchers with zero input or progress possible. She purposefully flubbed the last ball and winced when she made the match game for a free ball.

"Oh, no, a free game," Wangari said. "What an inescapable horror you're in."

Sucy groaned. "I don't even want it. It's probably a trick by Courtney to get me to kill myself." She cracked her neck. "Maybe we could edge in on that ice cream. Or we could go out back and fool around..." She put her arm around Wangari's waist.

"Hey," Wangari said, "a little quieter, maybe..."

"Mm, no 'I'm straight, I'm straight?'" Sucy chuckled and rest her head against Wangari's espresso-colored neck.

Wangari chuckled nervously. "Really, though, I'll look that thing up. That's worth a review piece in the next newsletter."

"Can't wait to read it. And to see what that ice cream thing looks like."

* * *

Lotte groaned and stretched out in her chair.

"Mother Mormo," Diana said, in awe. "How could you put away that much?"

The bowlers were gathered around a fishbowl stained with smears of ice cream, whipped cream, cake and cookie crumbs. "Wait," Sucy said. "How much did Lotte put away?"

"Well, I had plenty," Diana said, "but I think I called it quits when I tasted the second flavor of cake slice they had in it."

"I don't think I've ever said this," Lotte said, "but I think that was too much."

Sucy knelt behind Lotte's seat. "My, your craving for sugar hasn't gone down since last I checked."

"They had German chocolate... and red velvet..." Lotte smiled weakly. "I just couldn't help myself."

"I bet you couldn't," Sucy said, distracting her from Wangari taking pictures. "Can we see that little Finnish belly of yours? I bet it's just full to bursting from all that sugar you just ate."

"I'll bet," Lotte said, reaching for the hem of her shirt.

Akko interposed herself between Lotte and Wangari's camera.

"Hey," Wangari said, "this is newsworthy stuff! Lotte just ate an epic amount of food! She could get on the Travel Channel for this!"

"Maybe," Akko said, "but Sucy's way too interested, so it's probably dirty."

"Dammit," Sucy said, giving Lotte a too-strong pat on the tum making her hiccup a mix of melted stuff. "That would've been fifty pounds from Jazzy, easy."

"Jas... why would she do that?" Lotte said in a daze.

"Ask her sometime," Sucy said. "We're outie, you guys do whatever."

"We were going to go home soon too," Diana said.

"You're cribbing from the best," Sucy said. "You're welcome."

* * *

Akko rolled Lotte onto her bed. "Just for tonight," Akko said.

"Thank you," Lotte said. "I promise I'll treat your bed right."

"No, that's for me," Akko said, climbing onto Lotte's bunk. "Ahh, it's so cool up here..." she said, flopping out. "It's a little lonely without Chariot but the air is so, it's so... neat." She sniffed Lotte's pillow. "What's your shampoo?"

"I wash my hair with scentless shave soap and then I use a scented soap. That's Texas Bluebell. Sal from Texas sold it to me."

"Neat," Akko said.

"Can you hand me my crystal ball?"

"Oh, yeah! Can you hand me my tablet while I'm at it?"

It soon became apparent that just wasn't going to happen, so Akko hesitantly de-bunked and made the exchange.

"Any word from Sucy?" she said while flipping the cover off her tablet.

"My phone's not on silent, you'd have heard if I heard."

"Huh... weird," Akko said. She furrowed her brow. "She better not be doing dirty stuff with Wangari."

* * *

"Five friggin' pounds?" Sucy said.

"She took points off for the belly being clothed and Lotte being a girl," Wangari said, plugging her phone in to its charger.

"Curse Jasminka's indomitable straightness," Sucy said, lying on Wangari's bed.

Wangari's crew's room had the exact template as the rest of the normal-kid dorms. Wangari installed thick curtains, presently drawn against the late evening sun, so the room could be converted to a darkroom if need be or they felt like it. Joanna had the top bunk, Kimberly the bottom, Joanna watching Wangari and Sucy and Kimberly typing furious diatribes on Twitter and Tumblr.

Wangari took a seat on her bed, phone in hand. "Hm, on the bright side, now our schedule's clear to make fun of that pinball game." She typed in a quick search. "Delgo pinball... hmm..." She scrolled down a few pages of results. "That is what we played, right?"

"Must I conjure its lightless horror in my mind's eye once more?" Sucy said.

"Maybe you should," Wangari said. "Because I think we might be on to something."

"...are you coming out as a whatever-kind-of-furry those were? Because, one, no judgment if you are, but two, if now, why for them?"

"Scope this out," Wangari said, showing a picture from the Internet Pinball Database. "It turns out _Delgo_ was some kind of CGI movie that came out in 2008, released alongside _Avatar_."

"Not much competition, huh?" Sucy said.

"To the tune of bein' worst-grossing wide release 'til _The Oogieloves_ came out," Wangari said.

The gears ground in Sucy's head. "Wait. This was so bad it couldn't beat the live-action Last Airbender?"

"Wha--no, James Cameron's Avatar!"

"I keep forgetting that exists. It's like the least-deserving highest-grossing movie of all time."

"That's needlessly cruel," Kimberly said. "That movie may be highly archetypal but its style and--"

"Shut up," Sucy said.

Kimberly aimed her wand. "You'll need to bury me first. I'll not hear smack talked about a movie with that pedigree when films of substantially lower objective quality go by quiet and unheralded just because you feel the need to cut down tall poppies."

"We'll fight this out later," Sucy said, her own wand's tines glinting in the light.

"Agreed," Kimberly said, collapsing her wand by pushing it in against the boards beneath the top bunk.

"With that digression done with," Wangari said, "that movie was in development for so long Freddie Prinze Jr. was the lead actor and it seemed like a good idea when they started. The pinball was ready nearly a year in advance. Four months before the movie's release they trickled out the three they'd manufactured out to help build buzz. Spoiler, it didn't work, and they didn't have enough money to have more made after the movie crashed and burned. One table was confirmed destroyed in a fire. Another was launched out of a cannon for an episode of... I think it was... one of those internet reviewers that were big a few years ago. And until now, it was known the third was destroyed in a symbolic burial of the title character by the possibly actually-crazy director."

"...we didn't just imagine that pinball, did we?" Sucy said. "You got pictures?"

"Listen," Wangari said. "Maybe the one the director destroyed was a prototype model. There could've been a mix-up. We're looking at a literal one-of-a-kind pinball! Not a fancy boutique hand-made thing, not something that got hit with rights issues, not some semi-finished prototype, we're talking production-run none-remain historically-significant..." She gestured wildly. "...stuff!"

Sucy nibbled one of her wand's tines. "And those bowling geniuses don't even know it, do they. They might've just got it cheap because it's based on a movie nobody's heard of or likes."

"We need to go back there tomorrow," Wangari said, pacing around the room. "We gotta break the news, tell the internet, find a website, some place classy and reputable... we gotta get our emails ready for death threats..."

"Oh, I get 'em all the time," Sucy said.

"Right, you're one step ahead of me! So tomorrow we go in and get the pinball scoop of the century!"

"When we steal it," Sucy said.

"When we..." Wangari stopped in her tracks. "Steal it?!"

"Yeah," Sucy said, smiling.

Wangari turned to her entourage. "'Steal it.' You heard that?"

"Been typin' it out, boss," Kimberly said.

"I got a picture," Joanna said, shyly raising her camera into view.

"What do you think?"

Kimberly grunted.

"I'm with you, Wan-Wan," Joanna said. "You know, uh, whatever you decide to do, alright?"

Wangari dug her bare heel into the throw rug. "Hrrrn. This is historically significant... why would we wanna steal it?"

"To sell it for money," Sucy said.

"But who'd wanna pay--we could get in all kinds of--shouldn't you be asking Amanda?"

"Amanda got caught. You've never been caught."

"I've never tried...?"

"Then you have a perfect record. You just have to keep it up."

At some point Sucy had gone from lying on Wangari's bed to being in Wangari's face.

"Listen," Sucy said. "Pinball nerds will pay through the nose for a bad game because it's pinball. Nobody makes pinball games anymore. It's too expensive and it ends poorly 100% of the time. They're so desperate they'll pay us hundreds of dollars just to huff the dust we'll clean off the backglass." She slid her hands around Wangari's waist, hands resting on her backside. "This could be the story of a lifetime, where that bowling alley gets all our fame and business... or it could be the story of a knife crime, where we jimmy our way into that bowling alley and make out with the machine."

"I think you meant 'off,'" Wangari said.

"Oh, maybe I did. I just got lost in the smell of your hair. What's your shampoo?"

"Mr. Randy Watson's Sexual Chocolate," Wangari said. "Officially licensed. Chocolate, espresso, and..."

"Marshmallow," Sucy said, her dry lips on Wangari's cheek. It was a word meant only for her ear.

"...sure," Wangari said. It was cream, actually, but after the Hawaii/Vegas affair Sucy had developed an exceptionally weird attachment to marshmallows. "Thank you for noticing."

"I noticed," Joanna thought but didn't say.

"Come on," Sucy said. "Let's be sexy crime babes together."

Wangari closed her eyes and imagined.

"...dammit, Sucy, you know I can't say no to that..."

"The Wan-Wan Sucy Team-Up lives again," Sucy said.

"Let's hatch a plan," Wangari said.

"Oh yes," Sucy said, and kissed her.

Joanna cried. Kimberly rolled her eyes.

Wangari matched gaze with Sucy as best she could. The two of them had gotten intimate approximately twice before; once and a half back in Vegas, and half when they'd roped those handsome, handsome boys from St. Joe's for a night of Christmastime debauchery. They'd, well, enjoyed each other's company afterward, but...

That's a funny way of spelling "masturbated together to the same porn," isn't it?

They were both 18. It wasn't weird. (It was kind of weird.)

(Joanna always watched them, not the porn. Why?)

"Hey, uh..." Wangari said.

"Yes, brown sugar?"

"One, no."

"Okay, stricken from the book."

"Two: is this some kind of, of, weird form of... date?"

"If you'd like," Sucy said, smiling like a shark.

"I'm gonna need a second to clear my head," Wangari said, wriggling out of Sucy's grasp. "Jo-Jo, Kim-Kims, to my thinkin'-spot."

"(sniff) Yes m'am," Joanna said, crawling from the top bunk.

"Yess'm," Kimberly said, folding up her laptop and fetching her magic legal pad.

Sucy flopped back onto Wangari's bed and began searching for floor plans for the Astro Lounge.


	2. The Heist Itself

_Act 1: The Wrong Kiss Goodnight_

Constanze held her breath as she affixed the last piece of her custom action figure into place: the head, of course. She held the figure upside down and the head stayed in place. Good. She righted it, then made it look around: left, right, up... limited by the ponytail, but not too much. A look down. She set the head facing forward, tilted just a little to its left. Yes, it was ready.  
She set Avatar Constanze in the diorama by hand, nested in the to-scale garage-built Cosmic Key; already posed across from her in the royal palace were King Randor, Queen Marlena, and Prince Adam. She had traded place with Orko during the transmission, of course. Taking photos of her Legends Orko in and around Luna Nova would buy her time to test and 3D-print the rest of the props she needed for her--

A lukewarm tongue licked her cheek, accompanied by a throaty "leleleleleleleh" noise. Cons froze in place. Sucy. The Stanbot she stood on swiveled its body towards the two--no, the four intruders into Constanze's innermost sanctum. (The closet at the back of her machine shop, next to the room that used to hold Jasminka's possums and now held Jasminka's Goliath bird-eating spiders.)

"Owo? What's thi--" Sucy said.

Wangari put her hand on her shoulder. "No. Not now. Or ever, if you can help it."

"Fine," Sucy said, rolling her eye(s).

"Thank you," Kimberly said, jotting exactly that in her legal pad.

"PLEASE! STATE! YOUR BUSINESS!" the Stanbot said, deploying submachine guns.

"Easy, babe," Sucy said, hands sarcastically up. "We're just here to borrow some stuff for a heist. You like heists, don't you?"

Cons grunted.

"SHE IS! UNDECIDED! BUT NOT AGAINST! JUST YET!" the Stanbot said.

"You should ghostwrite for Dog Thoughts," Sucy said.

Constanze turned around once she was certain her work would not be disturbed. She held up her slate: "What do you want to take + why should I give."

Wangari took the fore. "No. 1. You know that webcomic you've been doin'? Full-page review in the next newsletter, glowin' red hot. That's for starters."

Cons narrowed her eyes.

"I was doing my reading a while back for reasons you don't need to know, and while I'm looking what should I come across but photos of really expensive-looking action figures in some of Luna Nova's most photogenic places for action figure fights? Plus the metadata showed you took your pictures with that tricked-out phone you like. Easy peasy. Though, man, I did not guess you'd have this much material to work with."

Wangari swept her arm. The shelves were lined with the expected dozens of mecha model kits but also dozens more muscle men and Amazonian women and bizarre vehicles and a few playsets, one of which Wangari and Sucy had seen before at 1:1 scale.

"Not complainin' or thinkin' less of you for it, just, wow. That looks pretty authoritative."

Hesitantly, Constanze held up her slate: "My dad collected them growing up. I collect them now. I'm not sorry." She wiped the slate and added: "Tell no one."

"We won't," Sucy said, "as long as you help us out."

Cons liberated a comment card from her breast pocket: "With what?"

Sucy told her exactly what.

"So, uh, about that number one, then..." Wangari said.

Cons scribbled a response: "Use my handle."

* * *

"Phrasing," Lotte moaned in the grips of her food coma.

* * *

"Certainly, Liebemaschine_2000_5. And number two..." She held out an envelope. "There's a Bitcoin miner in London who got busted for trafficking kiwis. The bird, not the fruit. His roomie's looking to get rid of a bunch of high-end graphics cards and he has no idea what they're worth. I told him I could find him a buyer with, and I quote, 'deep pockets.'" She winked at Cons.

Cons hopped up, catching the envelope in her mouth. "Mmrph," she said. Stanbot, Sucy riding atop him, rolled past Sucy, Wangari, and Wangari's news crew.

"Ladies, victory is at hand," Sucy said. "In, like, seven hours, because they close at 1 am on Fridays."

"Who the hell bowls past midnight?" Wangari said.

"I bet Akko would if she didn't care about curfew."

"Mm, true."

* * *

Hours later, in the dead of night and after a light, moonlit picnic, Sucy took a deep breath, put her hand on the doorknob.

"Here it is," she said in American Sign Language. "The true test. Be ready."

"You know it," Wangari said, also in ASL.

Sucy turned the knob and nudged the door open, the hinges blessedly silent. Inside, Jasminka was snoozing in bed, face covered by an open copy of A Brief History of the Dead and hugging a bag of popcorn taller than she was. Amanda was likewise asleep, leg dangling off her top bunk. The four witches crept past the two sleepers, Amanda softly farting in her sleep as they passed, as if out of spite, and discretely the conspirators entered the emergency access for Cons's room.

One by one the team landed on Cons's couch, sticking badass-looking landings once they bounced off. Sucy landed on her feet, trampolined straight up, and posed on the couch, holding up a portable hole. "Victory!" Sucy said. "Now let us store this stolen pinball machine in your secret base."

Constanze, who was awake at 3 am and watching porn, scrambled to cover her flatscreen TV with her entire body. She issued a questioning noise at the four intruders and pointed (without lifting her arm out of the way of the screen) at Kimberly, whose head-stocking was pulled into what looked like a gloopy ponytail.

"Oh, because there's no room in either of our rooms and we completely forgot to look for a place to hide it before we went stealing."

Cons shot them all a look and mouthed the word "Pinball?"

"Oh yes. How about we regale you with the epic story? Will that calm you down, huh, sleepless little German girl?"

Cons nodded.

"Okay. We'll get us some chairs and drinks, you can stop hiding that porn, and we can all tell you the fantastic story of what we did."

"I took video!" Joanna said.

Sucy stared at her. "Were you not listening to me when I bitched out Kimberly?"

"It's..." Joanna sniffled. "It's what I do..."

"Well, as long as it's our eyes only," Wangari said, holding her hand out expectantly, "I don't see any harm in relivin' our victory and showing off to our co-conspirator. Isn't that right, Sucy?"

"Whatever," Sucy said, stealing one of Cons's Afri-Colas. "Let's have us a recap."

A Stanbot dutifully switched the TV from Constanze's porn to the output for Joanna's camera, and the team chillaxed and watched the miraculous tale of their victory over science.

_Act 2: The Great In-scape_

An hour ago, shortly after the light picnic dinner, Sucy pinned her hair up and pulled a silk stocking over her head. The four of them had their picnic on a convenience store on the opposite side of the street from the bowling alley; they'd climbed up their discretely by blending in with the evening crowds and then using a simple student-issue grappling hook to rappel up. Their stealth disguises--dark blue tactlenecks, pajama pants, whatever footwear they felt were quietest (Wangari barefoot, of course), and in Sucy's case, a floor-length black skirt. Because having a look is important, dammit.

"Savin' your mana by not using a magic disguise?" Wangari said. "Good idea!"

"Huh? Oh, I was gonna use a magic disguise, I just thought this would be really, really kinky. ... But yes, this is a good idea."

Kimberly stared at her stocking. "Not sure if I wanna put this on now. Maybe I can take my chances."

"It's for the greater good," Joanna said, adjusting her glasses under her stocking. "Or bad. Maybe 'better bad' is what I shoulda said. Does that scan, the alliteration? I mean, it's not me who does the speaking around here, it's Wan-Wan, so I... you know... could use the help in, uh, knowing..."

"That was a good try," Wangari said, patting her on the back, and at least Jojo's stocking was on to obscure her tears. "And now, let's see if this hair survives the stocking process!"

Sucy crept towards the edge of the building. "Step one," she said, unlatching her broom from her back, "we go in through the roof."

"Because they have the place wired for rooftop concerts," Kimberly said.

"Yes, like we mentioned before dinner," Sucy said. "To spread our mana around nice and even, I'm gonna--"

"Why didn't we bring a magic router?" Joanna said.

Sucy stood in swollen silence and said at last "Shut the hell up or you're jumping."

"Across the street?"

"If you're strong enough."

Joanna quietly mounted the broom behind Kimberly, who was behind Wangari, who was behind Sucy, who had the broom's business end in hand. They were on the far edge of the roof relative to the bowling alley. "Count of three, we run, then on the next count of three we jump and cast the flight spell. Got it?"

"Count of three, run, count of three, jump-spell," Kimberly said. "Easy peasy."

"Great. Three. Two. One. Book it, sluts!"

They did not book it.

"Okay," Sucy said from the bottom of the dogpile, "something went wrong, and it wasn't me."

"You could roll your skirt up," Joanna said.

"I swear to the debatably-sentient vorticies of power that is the phenomenon-god Zharlloigor I will be wearing your face by the end of the night."

"Like Optimus Prime?" Jo-jo said.

"Exactly like him. Now let's do that again with less sucking!"

Fifteen attempts later, all four witches clenched what broomstick they had room to clench and jumped and chorused " _Tia Freyre_!" And to their credit, the spell managed a mighty fart of mana that pushed them over the street and landed them on the roof of the Astro Lounge; to their chagrin, they landed directly on a trapdoor and crashed through it with their collective weight. They tumbled down the lightless stairs in a heap of witchy bodies and splintery broom and trapdoor fragments.

"Come... the hell... on..." Sucy grunted. "Every... freakin'... time?!"

"That's the burden you gotta bear as a leader," Kimberly said, plucking a three-inch-long broom splinter from the white of her eye. She reconsidered the virtues of the head stocking. "Ow."

"Joanna, punch her in the throat for me and you move two rungs up my Echeladder of Respect."

"Do what now?" Kimberly said. She felt a disturbance in the air and caught Joanna's flabby left hook in the nigh-utter darkness. "I scent treachery in this stagnant air. Must we settle this through blood?"

"I'm sorry, Kim-Kims," Joanna whimpered, "I just... those two rungs..."

"Hey, a handle!" Wangari said, opening the door. "And look, the bowling alley. We're in the clear. No need for any throat-punching or blood-spilling today!"

"This minute, anyway," Sucy said. "Joanna, you first."

Joanna led the venture into the bowling alley. The entrance was near the front desk and its pair of restrooms; after closing time not even the starry mood lights were on, casting two thirds of the place into cavelike darkness. Without the cacophony of bowling balls and chatter and the radio, their movements were disconcertingly loud, even the soft padding of Wangari's bare feet on the tile. The arcade at the back was an oasis of light and sound.

"Follow Jo-Jo," Sucy said, poking her in the lower back with her wand. Jo-Jo sniffled but obeyed, freeing her own wand and scanning the sea of black to her right and the video game aurora at her front for any signs of badness. Security guards in the dark, maybe, or unquiet spirits from the Celtic burial ground this place was built on, or the arcade refusing to get closer even as the shadow-choked hallway grew ever-longer, trapping them in a timeless void of desire with no hope of--

And they were in the arcade, walking past an out-of-order Street Fighter Alpha cabinet. Okay, freakout done. Freakout hopefully done.

"Hey, anybody have any tokens?" Wangari said, eying an enclosed sit-down cabinet. "I never could get in on that Jurassic Park lightgun game."

Sucy tilted in and checked the screen. "Ah, no, this is the ticket redemption one," Sucy said. "It's just here to trade time and money you could spend on good video games for tickets to buy a drastically marked-up Funko Pop of the cast of Ready Player One. Like if you're Catholic and you're giving up happiness for Lent."

"...like, one of the cameo characters?" Wangari said.

"No. One of the OCs."

Wangari shuddered. "Christ, feels like a bunch of geese walked across my grave."

"It is kind of scary in here, isn't it, m'am?" Joanna said, huddling behind her for protection.

"No, it isn't," Sucy said, pushing her away. "Now let's get that awful pinball game."

They crept past ancient games with INSERT COIN and 0000000 PTS burnt in to their screens, past a beckoning Polybius, to the pinball games struggling to exist in a world leaving them behind. To Delgo.

Sucy's abandoned game was still playing. The game music blared through the speakers, her fourth pinball was loaded and ready to fire, and every few seconds Delgo himself (or so everyone present presumed) declared in an awestruck voice that Council Vote Multiball was lit. Sucy leaned over the table. "Look at you," she said. "Waiting for my approval like a kicked capybara. You know what I think when I see you?" She stroked its black side rail. "I see a failure that knows it's a failure. I see desperation and fear. Do you know you're the last?" She crept towards its speaker and whispered into it: "Your brothers and sister are dead. They are goddamn dead and all you did was stand here taking what quarters you could like a desperate slut. I have good news for you. We're going to use you harder than you've ever hoped to be used. You're going to obtain more quarters than you ever thought possible. Of course... they're not for you. They're for us. We will sell you for our own pleasure and you will never know the sensation of a fresh coin pumping into your slot again. Why, not that anyone ever loved you to begin with, but you'll never so much as desperately hope for a strong hand to..."

Kimberly tapped her pen against her notepad. "Well? Get on with it."

"Stop writing this down, that's weird," Sucy said.

"You're sayin' it, I'm transcribin' it. What?"

"Why are you recording evidence, bitch?"

"It's what I do," Kimberly said, inventing a way to narrow her eyes further.

"Well, fuck it either way, you've killed the mood." She spanked the pinball's backside.

"Why'd you say 'quarters?'" Joanna said.

"Shut the fuck up and let's get this plan rolling." Sucy pulled a potion from her belt and poured it over the glass, absorbing into the machine. "That should keep it powered for about an hour. Kimberly, do the thing you're supposed to be doing. Wangari..." She reached for a tube strapped to Kimberly's back, pulled it free, and threw it overhand at Wangari, who caught it without blinking. "You're taller, so roll it out."

"Got it!" Wangari said, uncapping the tube and sliding the portable hole out. She waved it out like a carpet. "So, all I have to do is..."

Kimberly yanked back on her telekinesis spell, unplugging the pinball game and spooling up the power cord. "Council Vote multiball is lit," Delgo said through popping speakers. "Alright, got this part..." She wound the cord around its neck, where the backlight met the table.

Joanna raised her hand. Sucy humored her. "What?" she said.

"Should I cast the spell on the security system?" she said. "Like, now, miss?"

"Wait 'til we're done. I think that's how it works."

"That is, but... you know... what if there's stuff and I can tell you if something's coming? It'll be neat."

"Okay, march your flat ass on to the security room alone in the titular dark and get eaten by a haunted animatronic figure." Sucy bit her lip. "Make me happy for once."

"We hit a snag, Sooce!" Wangari said. She'd draped the portable hole over the top of Delgo and the machine steadfastly refused to enter.

"Hrm?" Sucy scooted over. "It should be vanishing right in. What in the..." She lifted a corner of the hole, held her breath, and shoved her head into it. After a few moments she yanked it free, head frozen solid; she punched herself in the face until she was free. "Okay. So, fair cop, I totally stuffed a bunch of stuff in there earlier for, like, the party later..."

"The what now?" Wangari said.

"The post-heist party."

"There's--why didn't you mention that earlier?! I could've helped! ... Oh, wait, what does that mean for us?"

"It means I can definitely make room but it's gonna take a second." She flipped out a collapsible cauldron. "Oh, shit, right, I forgot to--dammit, you two, why are you so distrac--Wangari, how do you get anything done with these people in tow?"

"Deep breaths, babe," Wangari said, putting her hands on Sucy's shoulders and giving them a good rub. "Remember, most to least important. Who-what-when-where-why-how."

Sucy grumbled. "Right, right. Okay, who... right." She dug around her belt and threw a cartridge at Kimberly, who flinched away and got struck in the shoulder to spite her cowardice. Wangari caught the device and handed it to her bestie. "Here you go. What's that do again, Sooce?"

"Stick it up that magic camera's ink hatch. It has an ink hatch, right?"

"It does," Joanna said. Her camera's eye widened.

"And you're not recording anything right now, are you?"

"No," Joanna said, and in the heat of the moment, managed to lie.

"Great. Take a picture of the pin and the camera will give birth to a duplicate that'll last about three days before it explodes."

"Explodes?!" Kimberly said, hiccupping. Her camera didn't look too enthused about this either.

"Or melts, whatever. The point is, it'll look like it just reached the end of its natural lifespan and we will be far away." Sucy dug through her ingredients pouch. "Now let me brew up a cold resist potion so I can climb in that portable hole, rearrange things, and then we can load that big fat bitch in without a problem. Basic inventory puzzle stuff. We got this. We will have always got this. Wangari, you're leading in my stead." She dumped the potion over her stockinged head.

Soon Sucy climbed into the portable hole as it lay on the floor like a Vantablack carpet. Nearby, Kimberly comforted her camera while it worked on printing a duplicate Delgo pinball machine through its photo slot. Kimberly took the opportunity to write down her thoughts on the adventure thus far, and Wangari fiddled with some of the other pinball games.

"Man, Elvira's tits are huge, ain't they?" Wangari said.

"Yes, m'am," Joanna said, scratching the camera under its zoom lens. "Do you like big boobs, Wangari?"

"Well, I kinda like, you know, the extremes. Big beefy guys with huge dicks, big buxom babes with huge tits. It's neat, you know? Like, mm! Chariot's a good example, you know? She's got the big, she's got the titties, but she has that sort of Wonder Woman Amazonian perfection thing going on. Have you ever really paid attention to her pictures from back when she was just an entertainer to, like, how she looked when she helped save the world?" Wangari snapped her fingers. "Blammo! Went from gracile to robust, like that. Normally I like me some soft femme in my ladies, but you can't argue with Chariot du Nord."

"So... you like that kind of lady?" Joanna said.

"Aesthetically, yeah!" Wangari said, beaming. "I'd rather have a guy, but if there's gonna be a girl gettin' it, you know it's cool for her to look like she's deserving the deep dicking, you know?"  
Joanna felt her heart tremble in fear. "Yeah. ... Er, this is just a hypothetical, but..."

Kimberly cleared her throat. "I see a possible issue."

"What kind'a issue?" Wangari said, looking over to her. Kimberly gently put her hand under her chin and pointed her head at the thing she needed to look at.

There was something looming in the dark, its presence betrayed by the delicate loglow of ticket redemption games flashing colorful lights. It was a good seven feet tall, its segmented body flocked with faux fur everywhere but its joints. What animal it was supposed to be wasn't clear.

"Aw, hell," Wangari said.

_Act 3: Five to Ten Minutes at Freddy's_

"Nine out of ten security guards are killed by haunted animatronic animals every year. Fact," Kimberly said.

"Yeah, I know."

"Think they just bought a haunted animatronic to do their security for them?"

"I think that sounds likely in the circumstances!" Joanna said. "It's around the time of night they start to get active!"

"Uh-huh. Now, uh, hypothetically, do we know how to kill one of these before we get decephalated or stuffed into a fuzzy iron maiden?"

"Wangari," Joanna said, huddling up behind her, "I think we have an option."

"Wait... the thing we got from Constanze?"

"Would that work?" Kimberly said. "Is that why Sucy wanted it? I mean, she didn't tell us about the post-heist--"

The animatronic lurched ahead, happy music playing from internal speakers. Its bright, half-lidded eyes were locked on Wangari.

"No time for a bench test," Wangari said, quoting the dramatic adaptation of a historical event. "Call it, girls."

Kimberly and Joanna held out their wands and spoke the subspace invocation word. Constanze's loaner appeared in mid-air and landed in Wangari's outstretched hands, ready to use: a Winchester shotgun with a near-rectangular suppressor the length of the barrel hanging off the end, a historical German zweihander with flamberge-pattern blade affixed to a reinforced bayonet lug.

"See you later, alla- _hater_ ," Wangari said, shooting the beast in the chest with a subsonic slug that made a noise not unlike whacking a baseball with a bat. The robot's chest bucked, a thick dent kicked into it; it looked down at the injury, scratched at it with a curious detachment, and ambled forward.

Wangari felt for the pump and found that the sword's handle made it functionally impossible to pump the next shell in place. She fiddled with the lugs and found them good and rigid.

"Well!" Wangari said, "This was better in theory than shit!" The monster was one row of video games away from her. She swung the shotgun overhead and swung it down at the animatronic's ambiguously furry head, the wavy blade biting into the fiberglass shell and bouncing off the sturdy metal and wire endoskeleton, minus a chip in the blade. Wangari fumbled back into the pinball machine. "Help?" she said.

Joanna hopped in front of her, arms open wide. "Take me instead, killer robot!"

Kimberly hopped in front of Joanna and jabbed her wand in the robot's face. " _Cuinathae iongantach_." Magnetic forces seized the robot's joints in place, and, with a headbutt she immediately regretted, sent the beast falling onto its back. She covered her forehead with her hand, trying to stem the gush of blood from her opened scalp. "Okay. Who has a healing spell? Or a potion? I'll take a band-aid, Christ."

Joanna tapped her wand on Kimberly's head, healing green light suffusing through it. "There we go," she said. "That stopped the bleeding. And now my entire face is covered in blood. And it's soaking into the... okay, I'm just seeing and smelling and tasting my own blood now..." She fumbled away from the robot and into a Fighting Vipers cabinet. "Gimmie a sec, I gotta..."

Wangari, meanwhile, threw the shotgun/sword onto an arcade cabinet and climbed up it. "Let's see if your smug robot ass can argue with gravity!" she said. She jumped off the cabinet, shotgun in hand pointed down, and landed with sufficient force to pierce the robo-chest of the automaton, through wiring, off the chestpiece and support structures, and into the ground, where the tip briefly embedded in the tile. Briefly, as the blade now supported all of Wangari's body weight. The blade bent, then snapped, Wangari landing on her let's-be-honest-it-could-be-better-padded ass.

* * *

Constanze spit Afri-Kola all over the floor and grabbed her slate.

"We'll fix it, it's cool," Sucy said. "Repair magic exists, remember?"

Constanze wiped the slate and, fuming, broke off another chunk of Scho-Ka-Kola to calm/inflame her nerves.

* * *

"...Well, that got it!" Wangari said. Joanna helped her to her feet. "I mean, wait... I got one. I think it got the _point_!"

"That was cool, m'am," Joanna said, blushing.

"Thanks for the savior play, too, that was cool of you."

"It's... it's nothing..."

Kimberly readjusted the fit of her stocking such that a long dangly glob of blood now hung down her back like a gross ponytail. "It's like two-thirds nothing, though, what with me doin' the sacrifice play and leaving--son of a bitch, all that DNA evidence." She groaned. "Okay, hang on, I got this... and the shotgun slug... just... gimmie a minute."

Not far away Sucy's hand breached the surface of the portable hole; she crawled free of the hole, slick with ice and a mysterious, thin plasm. "Okay!" Sucy said. "The hole has room for the pinball machine. Bad news, we're going to have to shove it in there lengthwise. So, uh, somebody be really strong, okay?" She shook off the ice and plasm like a dog, lightly splattering Wangari, who was used to this by now.

"Cons's gun didn't really do the trick against the animatronic," she said.

"The what now?"

"The... the animatronic? Isn't that why you brought the gun?"

"No, that was for if the police showed up. Anyway, let's shove that pin in," Sucy said.

* * *

 

"Son of a bitch," Sucy said, "I meant everybody but me." She felt around under the table for a good grip.

"Well, uhm, Kimberly's bus--" Joanna said.

"Shut the fuck up," Sucy said.

"yessm" Joanna said.

"Easy on her, okay?" Wangari said. "One of us is the tallest and it ain't either'a you."

Sucy groaned. "Let's get this over with. One two three lift."

Five seconds later and Delgo lay where it had a moment ago.

"Shugoran insufflate our pathetic girl muscles out from under our skin," Sucy panted. "Why don't these fucking head socks breathe I'm drowning in my own sweat and it's making me kind of horny."

"Sucy, do you have something for this?" Wangari said, looking around the portable hole. "Strength potion, TK spell?"

"Yeah," Sucy said, fwipping her wand ready. "Jo-Jo, you better not screw this up."

"I promise I won't," Joanna said.

On three, the two cast a medium-duty telekinesis spell, the pinball table precariously floating above the ground. With whispered instructions by Sucy and a little help nudging it in place with their own hands, the table vanished into the depths of the hole with only a little muss. At Sucy's word Wangari rolled up the portable hole and strapped it to her back.

"...so why didn't we do this first?" Joanna said.

"I wanted to conserve mana," Sucy said.

"And you thought we'd have enough... how much do those things weigh, anyway?" All three of them pooled magic to lift the duplicate Delgo.

"'bout a hundred thirty KG," Kimberly said, checking her phone. "By the way, there's no blood anymore, you're wel--"

The sound of the animatronic stepping into place behind her snapped her out of her train of thought. Wordlessly she flung herself onto the ground, hands over her head, and reflexively Wangari, Joanna, and Sucy hurled the duplicate pinball table at the monster.

The fake cabinet exploded into thousands of broken plastic and metal and glass components and sent the animatronic barreling into a Revolution X machine behind it, toppling it into the Ms. Pac-Man game on the other side. The animatronic threw off the frame of the pinball, sending it smashing through a ticket redemption game, reels of tickets spewing into the air.

"I think we've made a mistake," Wangari said.

"I think we have," Sucy said.

"Where's the gun?!" Kimberly said, panic-crawling over to them.

"Oh, shit, where's--" Wangari said.

The animatron leaned over and picked the shotgun off the floor. It bit the gun in half at the action, chewing noisily as chunks of metal, wood, and loose rounds spilled to the ground.

* * *

...much as Constanze was now trying to bite at Sucy's neck.

"I--didn't--even--get to--use--ow!" Sucy said as Cons settled on her inner elbow.

"Should I... should I pause it?" Joanna said.

"No! The show... must... go on..." Sucy said. "But somebody please grab my pouch with the skull and crossbones on i--" Cons now settled for kicking her in the crotch. "hweeeeee"

_Act 4: The Fall of Reach_

"Ladies," Sucy said, unlatching a potion from her belt, "I think it's time to do a little damage control."

Wangari aimed her wand at her feet. "Vega Varulus," she said, and a green glow encircled them.  
Joanna loaded a reel of film into her camera; Kimberly looked around at the selection of arcade machines and found the out-of-order Street Fighter Alpha game past the Big Lebowski pinball.

"Alright. Somebody take point, I'm gonna need a sec," Sucy said, seating herself on the floor and re-deploying her collapsible cauldron. She poured the potion in and felt around for more ingredients.

"On it. HUP!" Wangari said. She cartwheeled at the animatronic, still rooted in place chewing through the barrel of the shotgun. She hopped off her hands and punted it in the midsection, sending it flying away and into a ball return, smashing it. Wangari landed in a ballerina-like split, saluting her foe. "Thank you for flying Air Kenya, I'm your pilot Wangari and I'm here all night." She turned to Joanna. "Did that scan?"

"It's just fine, m'am!" Joanna said, skipping past her. The animatron clamored to its feet just as Joanna took a knee, aimed, and fired, the cursed film knocking the mechanical beast back into the ruins of the ball return. Joanna danced around the haunted nightmare beast, snapping photo after photo and stunlocking it in place. When the camera whirred, signalling the end of the roll, the animatronic, smoldering from within, fumbled forward, groping the air with its outstretched clinging-limbs.

Just in time for Kimberly's animated Street Fighter Alpha cabinet to punch it in the face with its new robot arm.

"You got it, bro!" Kimberly said, throwing some mock punches into the air. The robots traded awkward blows, or at least Street Fighter Alpha did, eventually pinning its enemy to the wall and punching it in the breadbasket over and over and over again.

Wangari narrowed her eyes. "Hey. Anybody noticing a pattern here?"

"It's not very good at trying to kill us?" Joanna said.

"I mean, I'm gonna be honest, I was half-assing that spell 'cause I was ready for death, but it seems to be doing way better than I anticipated," Kimberly said. She got closer to the fight.

Street Fighter Alpha kept punching away and the animatronic kept taking it.

"Did we break its spirit?" Joanna said.

"Huh, kinda looks like it," Wangari said. She felt around her inventory and held out her microphone. "Good sir, can you inform us why you're not trying to kill us very hard?"

"Finished!" Sucy said, winding up to toss the contents of her cauldron at the fight. Wangari instinctivley leapt out of the way; Joanna and Kimberly were left behind watching as Sucy tossed a bucket of jelly that burst into purple flames on contact with the animatronic and Street Fighter Alpha.

SFA played a bunch of hurt sound effects and ambled off into the lanes. The animatronic slumped towards the nearest fire alarm, which Sucy blew into chunks with a mana bolt. "Alright, we're done here," she said. The animatronic leveled its smoldering head at her, its eyes blackening as the plastic began to melt. "Yeah, gimmie the side eye, like it matters." She waved her hand in front of her face.

"Are we not gonna hack the security--" Joanna said. "...oh, the, uh..." The arcade was now on fire.

"Yeah, now we shou--"

* * *

The video playback ended.

"It was pretty straightforward from here," Joanna said. "We found a fire exit and left and flew back and I'm pretty sure the fire had to have gone out by now... so that was the heist."  
Constanze burbled. A little home-brewed chlorpromazine and a few belly rubs from Kimberly cooled her temper and brought her perilously close to giving in to that lady Sleep. She wrote something on her slate, which nobody present could read.

"Chill, babe," Sucy said, patting her head. "We're just gonna set up our stuff in here, have a few drinks, then go back to our rooms and nap. Okay? We'll even tuck you in. That sound good?"

"buuuuh" Constanze said, dozing off at last. Sucy handed her off to Stanbot, who buzzed over to her futon.

"Alright!" Wangari said, reclining against the pinball machine. "We've got 'em plugged in, we're safe at home... I think we're good!"

Sucy produced a handful of cheap, evil-smelling beers. "Then let's get good 'n goddamn wasted." She flicked the cap off one bottle, caught it in her teeth, and spat it with the precision of a Red Lectroid at a play button on a giant 80s boombox. "Partyman" began to boom through its robust speakers.

Things got rowdy from there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things I am strongly considering: bumping the rating up from Mature to Explicit.
> 
> If you catch my drift.
> 
> You probably do.
> 
> Thanks to Fandom_Mistress for proofreadin'!


	3. The Bang

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for sex with one character briefly shapechanging to a male body, a cumshot, and what I believe counts as snowballing.
> 
> You're welcome, people who didn't notice the rating is now Explicit.

Eventually, they got rowdy, I mean. It took a little warming up.

"Nobody, really?" Sucy said, downing both bottles of cheap, evil-smelling beer at once.

"Not my speed," Kimberly said, pouring herself a couple fingers of Scotch, neat.

"That's fine. I'm fine," Joanna said, mixing a virgin pina colada in Constanze's blender.

"I mean, drink what you want, babe," Wangari said. "It's a party, right? Go nuts!" She held out a Dark and Stormy made with a bottle of Bawls Ginger Ale stolen from Constanze's fridge. "Maybe we could try a little team-building exercise, huh~?"

"Under normal circumstances I'd be vomiting at that phrase, but I'll take the risk tonight," Sucy said, clinking another pair of beer bottles against Wan-Wan's drink. "What's the plan, sustainably and ethically-sourced African sugarcane?"

* * *

"BEHOLD!" Wangari said, gesturing grandly as a spotlight snapped on, shining on Delgo; only her silver-painted arm was visible in frame. "The rarest pin you've ever laid your eyes on, Internet! This pinball is the lucky third child that makes it to the end of the story where its older siblings die in disgrace!" She glided into full view at last, draping herself over the pinball table.  
Magic made it relatively easy to cosplay the Bride of Pin*bot, or at least one close without venturing further into cease-and-decist territory than she felt like dancing. Her skin was bright, polished chrome, scoring reels running up her long, shapely legs, a heart-shaped breastplate concealing her mystically-augmented chest. Her hair was dyed gray and a jutting rod gave her fan-like afro the appearance of a satellite dish, and her eyes were powerfully over-shadowed, 80's style, with car paint.

The look was Joanna's suggestion after a quick, sweaty Google search for product-selling cosplay.

"As you can see here, this machine is in perfect working order, renovated and ready to play," Wangari said, running her jointed fingers across the playfield glass. (Technically true; Kimberly whacked it with an object repair spell, being the best at it of the witches present.) "This historically significant machine has all its features present and accounted for, from its forty game modes--a world record!--to its fifteen bash toys--also a world record, standing since 2008!--to its thirty minutes of voice lines and lore to expand on the legendarily... present... movie property. And let's not forget, _deiser Verbotene Zauberermodus_!"

"Council Vote multiball is lit!" Delgo said.

"Said to be the Wizard Mode that puts all Wizard Modes to shame, so crazy that the designer sealed himself in an airless vault to take the secret with him." She groped her big robot titties while waiting for Kimberly to add an "RIP Jimmy Talos 1975-2008" dedication. "Maybe you'll be the pinballer to uncover that majestic secret. Won't that be wonderful? Think of how much money you'll make on streaming websites for that! It could easily recoup the fortune you spent acquiring this game from us! Easily, I tell you!

"So," Wangari said, approaching the camera with her arms behind her head and her hips swaying like magnets were yanking on them from alternating sides. "Why are you even waffling about this? Put your money where your mouth is and show the world how much you're dedicated to the art and craft and skill of pinball."

Sucy, dressed as the Black Knight as seen on Black Knight 2000 (a suit of black plate armor, accessorized with Golden Jaguar fang-necklace and a fur-collared cape she had lying around for no particular reason), stepped in and intoned, "Gimmie yo' money."

"And cut," Joanna said, ending the recording. "G-good job, you two. You look great. Really great."

"You're tellin' me!" Wangari said, continuing to grope her giant robot breasts. "Feel these suckers, they're great!"

"Don't mind if I do," Sucy said, popping off her disguise spell and groping Wangari's right boob with her bare hand. "My, that's a real-feelin' titty."

Joanna stared.

"Wanna join in?" Wangari said, pointing at her free boob.

Joanna found her courage and took Wangari's hefty, firm, yet yielding robot breast in hand, squeezing with possessive strength. "I would, Wangari," she said, cupping Wangari's chin with her free hand and bringing her in for a kiss. Wangari melted into her grasp, discarding her breastplate and shoving away Sucy's hand so her new girlfriend could fondle it instead. The two made out most impressively. "Sucy, bring me my mulled wine and a bed, I will be taking my lover now."

"Yeeeeesssss, master," Sucy groaned hunchily, hunching her way to the bed storage room to retrieve a bed so they (Joanna and Wangari) may lay on the bed and make love (Sucy could watch but not masturbate unless it was behind a curtain or couch).

"Take me, Joanna Thalidomide Fandanna," Wangari breathed, and Joanna's intense waking dream collapsed and she looked at Wangari's offered boob and burst into tears and ran into the spider room.

"Pussy," Sucy said. Only then did she notice the odd sheen her palm now had. "Wait a second. Why am I shinier than normal?"

"Oh, I never could get the hang of changing skin color with metamorfie," Wangari said. "But Constanze had a bunch of metal-colored skin paint from her Halloween costume last year, so I used some and left her some cash to pay her back."

"Huh. And you were just loving up on that pinball machine."

"Yeah, and... oh."

"The pinball machine we're trying to sell for cash money on the virtue of it being pristine."

"Council vote multiball is lit," Delgo said.

"Shut the fuck up. Kimberly, can you check the machine for paint smears and make it stop screaming at us?"

"Eh," Kimberly said. "I guess I can."

"Thank you. I'm going to be bathing Wangari."

"...okay," Kimberly said, adjusting her collar. "Whatever."

Sucy attempted to pick up Wangari, found that to be an impossible task, and just pushed her towards Constanze's private showers she had installed at some point and tucked in the back. Kimberly cracked her knuckles, aimed her wand, and cast _Torimaud's unspeakable washer-woman_ ; a ghastly spirit of the air appeared, half of its probing members dripping with a weeping surfactant, the others dangling sheets of absorbent, abrasively-textured skin.

"Get cleaning, chick, ain't got all night," Kimberly said. The beast wept, for it could only weep, and set about the task of cleaning long smears of silver body paint from the pinball game.

* * *

The spider room was surprisingly cozy, with a warm, mildly humid clime and plenty of small alive plants for the tarantulas to frolic amongst. Joanna lay curled up in a corner on a robust, expensive beanbag chair, confessing her sorrows to the only one here who'd listen.

"Do... sniff... do you know what it's like to love someone... who doesn't love you back?" Joanna said.

The spider crawling on her face answered with a soft hissing noise as its chelicerae brushed against its two-inch-long fangs. Technically the Goliath bird-eating spider was crawling on her head, as her entire face was below its scritchy belly.

"Of course you don't," she said, her lips brushing against urcticating hairs. "If you dance your love-dance wrong then you get eaten, I think. You'll only die once because you're courageous by nature. Us humans are cursed with being smart enough to know just how completely doomed we are and so cowards like me die a thousand times before we finally work up the nerve to shut our bodies down and rot in a hole in the ground at best. Or if we're extra-doomed we're cursed to a perpetual twilight existence entombed in a tree living entirely within our memories like a Boltzmann brain. Am I gettin' those feelings through clearly...?"

The spider adjusted its positioning slightly.

"Is that a yes? It's Wangari that's the real wordsmith. She's just so passionate, so invested in the art and science of the news and the delivery of the news..."

She shifted her position and elbowed a button she hadn't seen. A panel in the wall to her left slid up, revealing what was either a high-def screen or a two-way mirror. She'd always wanted to spy through a two-way mirror; it was one of her most secret passions as both a newsperson-in-training and just in general. It reminded her of Scooby-Doo and some porn she'd watched.  
Speaking of some porn she'd watched, after she set the gargantuan spider on a nearby bonsai tree, she heard a familiar voice pipe through a speaker.

"By the way," Sucy said, "I appreciate your pubic hair efforts. I ever mention that?"

"You mighta, but I could always use a refresher~" Wangari said.

Kimberly pressed her face so close to the mirror (it turned out to be) that her glasses clinked against the glass.

The bathroom was simple but lush in its simplicity, with convenient shelves for toiletries, a radio piping through recessed speakers, and lacquered wooden benches for sitting or reclining. Very German. Oh, and Sucy and Wangari were showering.

Wangari was scrubbing silver paint off her calf, foot planted on one of those handsome benches, her thin fingers working lather into smooth, taut-muscled calves. Also, she could see Wan-Wan's vagina, ringed by fine blonde stubble. Sucy was seated next to her, drinking from a tall bottle of water; compared to Wangari's athletic, trim build, with gently-defined abs and tiny breasts, Sucy had amphibian pudge with smooth, hairless gray skin all over, even between her legs.

"I mean, I'm all for the Roman-statue look, but if you gotta have pubes, you gotta put in the effort, people. It's like a haircut for your pussy." She paused. "Hell, if I phrase it like that people are gonna start wearin' fauxhawk pubes 'cause I'm a Zhardamn trendsetter."

"Hey, why not?" Wangari said. "People are all about unusual body expression these days! I say let that loose upon the internet and see if anyone bites the hook. Can I post it on my fashion blogs?

"You have a fashion blog?"

"I have an everything for everything. The news and my all-important perspective on it's gotta get out there."

"Hrm. I guess."

Wangari balanced on one foot as she aimed a detachable showerhead's stream at her leg, washing lather and paint and leaving only smooth brown skin. She wriggled her toes. "Back to normal!" she said. "And feeling..." She latched the showerhead back in its place. "Is it weird I'm kinda horny all of a sudden?"

"You did just make a shitton of money," Sucy said. "Plus, with the near-death experience and the shotgunning and all that, you might be coming down from an adrenalin high just in time for the endorphins to carry you to Sexytimeland. Like a brain-chemistry speedball." Sucy slid herself down the bench, closer to Wan. "Any guy in mind?"

"Well..." Wangari put a hand on her own face, tickling the edge of her lip with her pinkie. "You know, I was thinking about giving you a second try."

Sucy raised her visible eyebrow. "I'm finally back in your good graces?"

* * *

 

Joanna covered her mouth and tried to figure out the emotion she was feeling.

* * *

 

"Well, to forgive is divine, isn't it?" Wangari said, smiling at her good frenemy. She switched which leg she had propped up on the bench, giving Sucy a look at her goods. "Plus you've mainly been non-evil to me lately, which I appreciate. And, ah, how to put it..."

"M-hm?" Sucy said, leaning in close.

"You said the last time we did it... you said you can turn yourself into a guy?"

"I can," Sucy said, glancing at her wand on the wand rack. "I've been practicing on my boy mode, in fact. And I think that'd be fun to try out." She stood up and stretched, nearly bending herself in half as she limbered up her back. "Quick question, though. Is it alright if we finish it gay?"

"Like, me a guy too?"

"Like us both ladies."

"Sure, let's."

"Alright." She looked up at Wangari from between her legs. "Just think... for the first time in decades, someone's getting a deep dicking on campus without having to pay for it."

Wangari lay belly-down on the bench, looking at Sucy, gently kicking her legs in anticipation and perhaps unsubtly calling attention to her butt. "Alrighty. Let's see what you got."

* * *

Joanna fished her wallet out of her pocket, emptied it of money and cards, and jammed it into her mouth in case she needed to bite down. "Okay, God," Joanna said through the wallet, "if you're gonna show me my beloved get some solid dick from an iron woman... I'm game."

 **To Be Game Like Joanna, Keep Reading**  
**To Gingerly Skip What Promises To Be Weird Sex, Skip To The Bold All-Caps Phrase "ACH, HANS, RUN, IT'S THE LHORGOYF!"**

* * *

"Metamorphie faciesse," Sucy said, tapping herself with her wand. In a plume of smoke and bursts of green sparkles, Sucy now stood nearly six and a half feet tall, broad-shouldered, rippling with hard-won muscle and sporting a dick like a length of iron pipe. Wangari ceased her idle kicking and stared at her new dick in silent shock. Sucy struck a few poses, muscles audibly straining, dick whistling as it swung through the air.

"Good Lord," Wangari said.

"Pretty cool, huh?" Sucy said, arms behind her head and hips outthrust. "Ready to ride the Rod of Lordly Might?"

"I... this is gonna sound weird, but can you maybe make it a little less huge?" She crept across the bench 'til it was close enough for Sucy to feel her heavy breath on her dick. "'Cause I'm looking it in the eye right now and I'm thinking, uh, that might actually destroy me if I try to take it. Like, anywhere."

"Hrrrm. Alright, for starters." Sucy adjusted her metamorph, shrinking her mega-dick down to a more sane six-n-a-half-inch girth.

(What was it about "inches" that made it so wonderful as a unit of dick measurement? "16 and a half centimeters" didn't have the same ring to it.)

"There you go, how's--" Sucy said, and Wangari pounced onto her dick mouth-first. The two of them froze in shock; for a long moment they were still as a photograph.

Even at half its original size, Wangari could only fit Sucy's cock partway into her mouth, the cleft of its head resting on the back of her tongue. The shaft tasted like clean skin and musk; it tasted male in a way she could never quantify before. It had a weight, it had subtle textures. It fit on her tongue like a key in a lock. It was fascinating. And Sucy was entirely at her mercy.

Sucy had a lifetime of experience in a female body, and she'd had sex a few times. She was certain that doing it as a guy would be a cinch, that her lifelong skills at prolonging her own pleasure would carry over. But even this taste of pleasure paralyzed her as surely as if she'd chewed on a poison dart frog. Wangari's mouth was so Zhardamn soft, and the gentle motions of her tongue and cheeks traced bursts of delight across her dick...

Wangari felt Sucy tremble, and her lips, as best they could, formed a smirk around Sucy's captive erection. She clenched Sucy's bony hip-handles for her support and with deliberate slowness and some effort began to move her head, first away, then back towards the base, turning her head and running her tongue along the bottom.

"Please," Sucy said, "not so fast... I mean... not that quickly..."

Wangari laughed. She let Sucy slip out of her mouth, and she teased the tip with a finger. "For once, I'm the one goin' too fast?"

"I think I need more practice being a guy," Sucy said. "Nothing else to it. You know? It's just..."

Wangari gave her a quick lick along the cleft of her cockhead. "Just what? Too much me for you to handle? Big tough lady in a big tough boy-body... and a little mouth action makes you all mine." There was a look in Sucy's eye as she tried to think of a comeback and couldn't, and the way she flinched and gasped when Wan-Wan planted a kiss on her tip... oh, baby. Oh, man...  
"You do wanna ride this dick, right?" Sucy said. "'Cause if I pop off immediately you're not gonna--"

Wangari kissed her again, right beneath the cockhead, and it was too much. Sucy sputtered, paroxysms of pleasure rolling through her in waves, pearly jets of cum spurting into the air with each pulse of sensation. Wangari closed her eyes and tilted her face upward and let Sucy's seed rain onto her waiting face.

She'd fantasized about this for years, and the reality was almost 80% as good as she imagined it. Alas it didn't somehow immediately bring her to a sloppy orgasm, but it was hot and thick, its caress like loving fire on her lust-sensitized skin. It lay thick on her cheeks, forehead, across the bridge of her nose and trickling in long sticky strings off her chin. She held her blinded gaze in what she hoped was still Sucy's direction and said, "Not gonna what? Get to enjoy this present you gave me?"

Sucy was already back to her normal form and flat on her ass. Was that seriously how guys felt when they came? Her normal orgasms were longer and stronger, yes, but they took effort to reach. That boygasm was so sudden, and it may not have been the strongest she'd had but it was nothing to scoff at, and it left her feeling so... content. Unloaded. Pleased. A little sleepy. She stared at Wangari.

Wangari's smiling face was buried in her jizz, and Zhar-Lloigor take her if she hadn't wanted to register that thought since her first innocent internet search for "show me cum on black teens or i'll kill you google." That was her. That was all her and a little help from Wangari getting her to prematurely ejaculate.

Wangari smiled and fumbled her way into a seated position, legs spread wide for the benefit of her audience. She scooped up the semen dripping from her chin--better play it marginally safer than they had been--and licked the mess from her fingers, the salty, soapy flavor filling her mouth.

Sucy fumbled across the floor. "Yeah, bitch, eat my cum. You... you gulp that jizz on down. Zhardammit how do boys even exist..."

"Think you have enough strength for round two?" Wan-Wan said around the finger she gently suckled.

"No," Sucy said, "but fuck it." She knelt between Wangari's spread legs and pulled them further apart. She stared at Wangari's ready, lust-dripping pussy, and when she mustered the concentration engulfed it with her mouth, slipping her serpentine tongue deep inside and sucking her vaginal lips. Wan-Wan cooed, locking her long legs around Sucy's head, stroking her long hair with her feet.

As she probed Wangari's tasty vagina with her long, sly tongue, poking the spot that made Wangari's toes curl around her indigo locks, Sucy felt her own cum drip from Wan's chin onto her head. She fumed in silent outrage at how horny that made her, her loins catching up with her girl-body at last. She dug her tongue into Wangari's g-spot with more dire force. You wanna play dirty? Sucy thought. Dirty's how I play it.

Sucy climbed up Wangari, replacing her mouth with two fingers gliding into her, catching her clit in the web of her thumb. She licked Wangari's navel, feeling the taut muscle under her rich brown skin tense at the ticklish sensation; she lapped her chest below her breasts, feeling the faint ridges of her ribcage beneath a padding of skin and muscle and body-smoothing fat; she nursed on each of Wangari's nipples one at a time, leaving pinprick bites around her aereolas to show how much she cared; she bit, with kitten-like delicateness, Wangari's neck, feeling her pulse race under her tongue; and with no shame or hesitation she slurped up her own seed from Wangari's face. She laughed.

"Hey," she said, "you know you're not supposed to taste your o--mmph!" Sucy seamlessly moved from layering her tongue with semen to kissing Wan-Wan, sharing her masculine bounty with her lover. The taste, Sucy found, was everything she had read about and more; Wangari let her do the hard work of gulping down most of it, breaking the kiss to shudder and moan and grope herself with her free hand.

"Gotta rebuild my strength," she said, "for the big final act." And she laid Wangari down on the bench and lay on top of her. She pounded Wangari's vagina with her fingers, nearly pinching her clit, and licked her pixieish breasts. She clenched her thighs around one of her lover's long, lean, powerfully-muscled legs and thrust against her, grinding her wetness against her thigh.

"Ahh..." Wangari said, biting her lip. She blinked at last, realizing it was safe to do so, and saw Sucy's face looming over hers. She was flushed, panting, and maybe a little furious at having to reassert her dominance. "Look at you go," Wan said, and kissed her, slipping her tongue between her lips, mindful of her teeth. Sucy gave up and returned the kiss with equal care and passion, tongues dancing as their hips moved with each other--Sucy's hand filling Wangari, Wangari's leg flexing and repositioning to help Sucy grind.  
Wangari felt it coming. "Suce, little... just a little..."

"Shhhh," Sucy said, and pressed her lover's button.

Wangari's entire body tensed with pleasure and she gasped. That moment she held her breath when she was coming--ah, yes, Sucy had heard it many a time when watching porn with her, but this was one she'd brought about directly, and so it was better than any other come-gasp on record.

(She'd muse about the subtleties of "come" versus "cum" later.)

Wangari's mind went blank but for the whole-body delight overwhelming her senses, and after that long, wonderful moment she breathed again and lay limp on the bench. Sucy considered chasing a second orgasm herself, and decided, ah, hell with it, one was plenty. She lay next to Wangari, on her side, arm draped possessively over her waist. "Blew your mind, didn't I?"

"You did," Wangari said, smiling. "Maybe lady-on-lady sex isn't as boring as I thought it was."

"You just needed to be _covered in my hot jizz_ first, like the _skinny blonde cockslut_ you are," Sucy said. "Next time, you're gonna get all however many inches we agree on and it's going to make this look like a sensible chuckle."

"Looking forward to it, handsome," Wangari said, kissing Sucy's nose. She turned to face the wall and waved. "Did we put on a good show, Jojo?"

Visible through the window into Jasminka's Magical Possum/Spider Theater she had inadvertently opened, Joanna bit clean through her wallet and a couple of bills.

* * *

**"ACH, HANS, RUN, IT'S THE LHORGOYF!"**

Akko's novelty ringtone from the short-lived Magic: The Gathering stage musical woke her from a deep slumber. Groaning, she felt for her phone, flinched at the bright screen striking her dark-adjusted eyes. "Hello?" she said.

"This is Akko, right?" a familiar voice said.

"...Carrie? The front desk lady from the bowling alley?"

"Yes, that's the exposition we're working with here. Something awful happened to the alley. Could you come down here? I need moral support."

"It--what happened?" Akko said, sitting up hard enough to whack her head on the lower bunk. "Ow, crap!"

On the top bunk, Lotte whimpered in her sleep.

"The alley, it... exploded!"

Akko took a moment to process it.

"Like... like an explosion? Like somebody blew it up?"

"Yes."

"I'll be right over. One sec."

She ended the call, rolled out of bed, jammed her bare feet into her shoes, grabbed her broom, and bolted out of the room, gunning it for Diana's room on the other side of the dorms.

* * *

To Kimberly's utter lack of surprise, there were no strategy guides for Delgo pinball, but while she waited for the spell to do its dark cleansing work she found a few video tutorials on how to ball the pins. She watched in sterm silence, sipping whiskey-and-water to get herself good and angry, until at last she felt confident in working the machine. She set her glass on the sleeping Constanze's forehead, stood up from her seat (the sleeping Constanze's body), and dusted her hands as she approached Delgo.

"Council Vote multiball is lit," Delgo said.

"You better goddamn believe it," Kimberly said, pulling on the novelty pickaxe-handle-shaped plunger and sending the ball careening into the hypercomplicated guts of the machine. She navigated the maze of targets and alleys and multiple flippers to finally smack the ball into the blinking Council Vote lock. Five more balls cascaded into the mess. It sounded like someone using an Amazing Marble Machine to compose harsh wall noise while Delgo narrated some lore.

"Just you and me now, noseless reptile man," Kimberly said.

"Sedessa's troops are moving from... the west!" Delgo said.

"I bet they are," she said, kneeing the front right flipper button that controlled the central flippers.

Once she got down the basics of pinball, the machine was substantially easier than it looked. The maze of gimmicks between the ball and the drain and outlanes made even the trickiest shots child's play to just repeat over and over again 'til she got the hang of timing and table-nudging.

Yes, she could've just let the ball drain twice and be done with it. But she was a reporter and she was curious. The total lack of documentation made her a pioneer... plus, what if she found something the repair spell didn't catch? Or glitches nobody on Earth knew about? This she had to do.

Not long after obtaining Gas Chamber Multiball, she switched her drink from whiskey-and-water to coffee. She shouted, "Yo, if there's an Alexa or whatever, play 'Take On Me.' Deadpool version is cool. Ready Player One version is not."

"INTERPRETING! COMPLEX! DECLARATION! OF INTENT!" a Stanbot said, and played the original, projecting the music video on the wall.

"You got your head on straight, robot," Kimberly said.

* * *

"M'a... Wa... I..." Joanna burst into a waterfall of sweat and tears. She whimpered incoherently for a few seconds.

"Shh, it's cool. We can hear you, by the way, there's these little speakers," Wangari said. "And if it makes you feel better, we were cool with it."

"I was very cool with it," Sucy said. "Made it better. It was like starring in my very own ne--"

Wangari put her finger on Sucy's mouth. "No. Forbidden word."

"Fine," Sucy said, licking the finger.

"Pretty cool, wasn't it?" Wan-Wan said.

Joanna stuffed her wallet back into her pocket on the tenth attempt. "M-m-m-m-m-m-miss Wangari, I... I kind of... is it alright if I say something that may destroy our relationship forever even if it's honest and from the heart and so on?"

"I don't see why not," Wangari said. "And don't sweat it, Sucy magicked me into a giant evil machine that poured green goop on me for like ten minutes. You can't possibly outdo her in the evilness department."

"I mean," Sucy said, "that's pretty mild, she coulda done some seriously fucked-up stuff while we weren't looking."

Joanna took a deep breath, and before she could express herself an alarm blared.

"The Troubalert?" Sucy said. "The hell is that about?"

"Hold that thought," Wangari said. "Let's get dressed and solve the latest crisis like we been known to do."

* * *

Kimberly continued playing Delgo as the rest of the team watched Stanbot project the early-morning news.

"Good morning, citizens of Blytonbury!" an older male reporter said on the local news. "It's five o'clock in the mornin', the sun hasn't come out yet, but a grim and tragic sun has dawned on the Astro Lounge Bowling Alley!" He gestured to the flame-damaged building behind him, firefighters venturing inside with hoses and axes and, paradoxically as Joanna reckoned it, a flamethrower. "Apparently some serious shit went down last night--wait, I'm getting--ah, sorry for the cursing, folk, that's just my legitimate first impression of the situation at hand. Can't blame me for being honest! Anyhow."

"This is amateur hour," Wangari said. "I could journalism circles around this guy."

"You could," Sucy said, slapping her ass.

(The two had considered continuing to be naked, but that turned into wearing matching his-and-hers bathrobes when the air outside turned out a little too cold for comfort.)

The reporter gestured for his cameraman to follow, and he did, with visible trepidation. "Things ended quite poorly, as you can tell from this gruesome automaton the EMTs are removing from the building!" the reporter said, pointing to the terrifying half-melted automaton several EMTs were, in fact, speeding from the building, the flamethrower guy following close behind.

"No!" a man in his late fifties said, jumping into frame. "Giuseppe Gerbil, what did they do to you, my bouncing baby boy?"

"Ah, and here is the owner of the Astro Lounge, London Calling, who as you may ahve heard changed his name at age 19 to his favorite album at the time." The reporter edged close to the man as he embraced the dead animatron and wept. "Pardon, sir, but can you give us your heartfelt thoughts on the matter?"

"Whoever did this, I will visit my vengeance upon them ten thousand times! This was my livelihood, my passion, my hobby! I swear to you that once my wife wakes up we will bring destruction to--"

Akko burst through a fire-weakened wall, dragging a half-asleep Diana behind her. "I CAME AS FAST AS I COULD!" Akko said, spitting out a mouthful of plaster.

"Akko, darling!" the owner said. "You didn't need to!"

"I had to," Akko said, "plus I can never say no to Carrie, you know?"

"Bless her heart!" the owner said. "But these are dark days indeed. The only thing that--"

"Yes, the only thing that survived the fire was, in fact, this Big Lebowski pinball table I'm seeing here," the reporter said, preparing to slap the arcade machine for emphasis. His hand aged to dust, the dust to nothing, before he could lay hands on it. "Ah, and it's cursed. Pardon."

"No," the owner said, "I had it blessed by a friendly local priest. It should slay demons instantly--and it's safe from destruction! I'm just so happy I could save it, this truly was my favorite."  
The reporter edged away from the pinball table. "So, on another no--"

Diana held up her hand. "Lebowski... pin... hang on." She sleepily browsed through her phone. "Right... rare pin... only 36 exist. Worth... you said this was blessed?" She fumbled her wand from her jammie pocket and waved it at the Big Lebowski table. "That's... Mormo's bronzed baby shoes, that's easily a +3-equivalent blessing. Do you have insurance?"

"Yes!" the owner said.

"If you should put this up for auction you'd be able to pull in triple what insurance would, and that's presuming you only market it to the cheapest of pinball enthusiasts. I happen to know a dragon who's interested in adding some physical components to his hoard again..."

Sucy paused the playback. "What the fuck?" Sucy said. "What the fuck?"

"It's worth what now?" Wangari said.

"How... how did we miss that?!" Sucy said. "Fuck, you were looking up rare pins and shit! Why didn't you notice that?"

"I just--I was just looking for Delgo information! I mean I guess I should've looked harder just in case but it's the Big Lebowski, I thought that would've been mass-produced and sent, like, everywhere!"

"Jojo," Sucy said, "how many bids do we have on Delgo?"

Joanna checked the eBay listing on her phone. "Uh..."

"'Uh' what?"

"There's a guy asking why anybody would want to... I'm just gonna quote: 'This game makes Popeye Saves the Earth look like the Addams Family. Just being near it must give you bad black magic curses. I cast this devil out from my sight.' What should I comment ba--" Sucy snatched the phone from her hand.

"'Listen here, you tiny-dicked wastrel,'" Sucy said, fingers flying across Jojo's phone, "'when I'm through with you you won't have--' Seriously, nobody's bid yet? Not even after seeing Wangari's robot tits? We set the buy-in super low!"

"I mean, ten thousand U.S. dollars is kind of--" Wangari said.

Jojo hit "play" on the Stanbot's head. A holy chorus sounded over the 'bot's speakers as a bowling ball levitated from a melted ball rack.

"Oh, hey, it's that ball I like using," Akko said, holding her hand out expectantly. The clear ball with a real human skull embedded in it returned to her hand.

"Atsuko Kagari I Have Bore Witness To The Destroyers Of My Home," the ball intoned through psychic vibrations also audible to conventional microphones. "Behold Their Faces And Take Action." An image shimmered in the air above the ball, like a mirage. The mirage solidified into a photo of Sucy, Wangari, Joanna, and Kimberly--not in their head-stockings, but from before the heist while they were enjoying a picnic on the roof.

"S--Sucy?! Wangari and her sidekicks, too?! What rank betrayal!" Akko grabbed the camera and spoke into it, the guy with the boom mic struggling to keep it in range of her speech. "When I get home I'm gonna find you and kick your asses for this! That's not a threat, it's a threatening promise!"

"Uh, can she do that, legally speaking?" the reporter said as he stayed very far away from the Lebowski pin.

"Threaten vigilante justice on live TV?" the guy holding the boom mic said. "She's in the clear if she's sufficiently protagonistic. That's a holy relic she's got, so, probably, yeah?"

"'--hit buy now or the entire internet will know you're a coward,'" Sucy said, hitting "send." "Okay, I've run him through with the truth, now we're either gonna make a sale or people are gonna throw money at us. What'd I miss?"

She looked up in time to see a hastily-edited graphic of Akko in her New Nine outfit, a flaming bowling ball edited into her hand, the phrase HERO OF THE BEACH burning above her head.

"I think we're in trouble," Joanna said, wringing her hands.

"Aww, dammit, I don't wanna get my ass kicked by Akko," Wangari said, holding herself. "She's really good at kicking ass."

"Yeah, but she's never had to fight us," Sucy said, putting her arms around her lover. "So let's brew some potions and prepare an ambush. We just have to keep Delgo safe 'til we sell it."  
"If we sell it," Joanna said.

Sucy leaned over and slapped her.

"Owww!"

"You watch us fuck and you don't even believe in us? You jackass."

"I'm... I..." Joanna burst into tears and ran back into the spider room.

"Alright, team, let's get planning," Sucy said. "We're gonna Batman the ever-loving hell out of Akko's Superman act. Kimberly, you keep playing that game to uncover its divine secrets or whatever."

"On it," Kimberly said. At some point she realized she could cheat. With everything but the wizard mode uncovered, all she had to do now was figure out what arcane combination of shots would enable the fabled dead man's secret; she waved her wand around, sending fifteen pinballs crawling around the table probing its endless shots.

"We've got this," Sucy said, pressing her cheek against Wangari's.

"...yeah," Wangari said. "Yeah! We got this!"

* * *

Meanwhile, Joanna cried into an armful of Goliath bird-eating spiders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of why this chapter took so damn long is lack of confidence in a sex scene. That and a vague feeling that my first should've been Diakko--but the Diakko Diana-birthday fic took care of that.
> 
> Critiques on the sex welcome and encouraged, I am incredibly rusty.


End file.
